Aveva accelerates towards merger

Aveva (AVV) achieved encouraging revenue growth and a 13 per cent rise in underlying half-year profits in the group’s first results since announcing its merger with French peer Schneider’s software business. Management says the deal is likely to complete on or around the end of 2017, creating “a global leader in engineering and industrial software”, but no additional updates on the merger’s cost synergies have been released. The tie-up is deemed "transformational", an overworked term, but the deal will expand Aveva's capabilities into some of the fastest growing digital segments.